Adaptive air suspension

Tiny
GREGM27265
  • MEMBER
  • 2005 AUDI A8
V8 all wheel drive automatic 63,000 miles.

Recently, my vehicle air suspension system failed. For about three days, I experienced not being able to adjust the ride height. After having the front brake pads replaced, it seemed to have totally deflated in the front and was too low to back out of the repair shop without using some boards under tires to get the car over the doorway hump. I had the car transported to the Audi dealer for repair. They advised me that a relay had failed and caused the pump to overheat and fail. What should this repair cost? And, as the pump was quite noticeably noisy when in operation, would its continuous operation be obvious? How long would it take a pump to fail? Note, the car was much lower in the front after this failure and scraped when going over a small rise in the road, whereas the rear seemed at its normal location for lowered height. The front tires were noticeably below the wheel well opening. Thank you in advance for your input.
Monday, January 25th, 2010 AT 2:54 AM

7 Replies

Tiny
MATHIASO
  • MECHANIC
  • 1,209 POSTS
Hello GregM27265,

If you do not deactivate the self-leveling suspension system or remove the fuse when doing brake or suspension work, the pump will fail. Why? Because when suspension moves the height sensor tell the system module the vehicle is riding high.
This happens when you did the brake job causing the relay fail and the pump to overheat and fail too.
How much it cost?
The cost varies from shop to shop, from city to city and from state to state, but I can say it is not cheap. If I guess for cost and where you live the cost is different, I will be giving you wrong information. What you can do is to call at least five shops around where you live and compare the prices.
My best advice, to avoid repeated failure and costly repair, deactivate the suspension system before you do the brake work, or oil change.
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Monday, January 25th, 2010 AT 10:31 AM
Tiny
GREGM27265
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Thank you.
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Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 AT 9:11 AM
Tiny
MATHIASO
  • MECHANIC
  • 1,209 POSTS
Thank you for your donation and for visiting 2CarPros. Com. We hope to help you again the next time you need us.
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Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 AT 12:26 AM
Tiny
DBM2000
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Wow, these guys must all work for the same dealer because the least this question deserves is a ball park answer.

I mean how vague can an answer get?

Mathiaso, is basically saying prepared to get taken where ever you go and does not want to give you an actual cost cause 1) he has no idea or 2) does not want to break the "dealer" code!

Bottom line is it could be a number of things from a sensor being moved out of position and needs to be reset to the correct position, a bad wire or worst case scenario a bad module.

It could cost any where from $80.00 to $1,000.00 depending on how honest the dealer is you go to.

Why should I know this you ask? Because I had the same issue and could not get a straight answer from the deal on a job they quoted me $900.00 for and in actuality was a two minute fix.

The sensors needed to be repositioned.

Note: Check the wiring for the level sensors can corrode but the sensors are quite robust unless damaged (physically).
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Wednesday, January 12th, 2011 AT 6:17 PM
Tiny
THIS IS MIKE
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  • 686 POSTS
We appreciate your additional information. Like you said, it could be a two minute fix or it could be a ridiculous $1,000.00. We recommend getting more than one estimate to make sure you are getting a good estimated cost.
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Wednesday, March 16th, 2011 AT 7:47 PM
Tiny
EUGENIUPETRASOV
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And how can I deactivate the suspension system on the same car same year?
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Wednesday, October 17th, 2012 AT 4:02 PM
Tiny
THIS IS MIKE
  • MECHANIC
  • 686 POSTS
Removing the fuse will deactivate the suspension system.
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Wednesday, October 17th, 2012 AT 5:30 PM

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